The "own_window_type" option is commented. There might be a type that does almost the same as specifying those hints, but I think this yielded the best results.I remember it working fine in fluxbox, but I'm not sure if I used these same options. Never got the transparency to work properly on kde, though...

Since we're on this thread, Does anyone know any way to force conky to stay on top of the desktop?When I click the "Show Desktop" icon on the task bar, conky dissapears off the desktop... I know it's still running though, it just goes under the desktop.

In order to get conky to be a startup item, which file should I add it to?Thanks!

With Xfce, just have it running ('conky &' from a terminal or ALT-F2, 'conky'), then log off with the 'save for future sessions' box ticked. It will come back the next time you log in. For fluxbox, I edited it into ~/.fluxbox/init (I think, not on the VL box at the moment and I can't recall which file it went into...).

Since we're on this thread, Does anyone know any way to force conky to stay on top of the desktop?When I click the "Show Desktop" icon on the task bar, conky dissapears off the desktop... I know it's still running though, it just goes under the desktop.

What desktop are you using - I've not had that problem with either Xfce or Fluxbox, but so far, I've not managed to avoid it if using KDE in the 5.9 SOHO beta. Very annoying... I'm on the dev mailing list, been meaning to ask if there is a suitable setting. I'll have to remember to send the developer a message.

Thought that might be the answer for KDE (I'm trying to run Conky in the current SOHO beta). Unfortunately, I already had own_window_type desktop set. So I tried setting own_window to 'no'. Which got me a transparent Conky, but lost the rest of the desktop icons. If I set it back to 'own_window yes' it comes up with a black background rather than transparent, and gets lost as soon as I try to use the menus or run anything. Its still running, must not visible.

xfce-mcs-manager~/.bluxbox/startwbar &conky &exec /usr/bin/fluxboxI use a script to start wbar, then start conky, then start fluxbox itself. That should get it running on startup for you. You can ignore the wbar stuff - I use it because I want to customize the icon sizes and a few other things, so I don't use the standard Vector vlbar script.

after some more testing I found out that this does not really solve my issue. So the search 4 an answer continues

I've found a partial answer to my problem with KDE. By changing own_window_type from desktop to override, Conky is no longer vanishing when I click things on the desktop, and its also not hiding desktop icons. However, I've now got the problem that its not using its normal transparency. After a bit of reading, its sounds as though I need something like Esetroot (which is in VL (well, SOHO at least), but which I have no idea how to configure) or feh. feh looks like the best bet, but it isn't in SOHO, so I may have to see if I can get it to build. I'll post if I can get it to work...

With Xfce, just have it running ('conky &' from a terminal or ALT-F2, 'conky'), then log off with the 'save for future sessions' box ticked. It will come back the next time you log in.

A possibly better way in Xfce is to go to settings and Autostarted applications, and make an entry for conky.The save for future sessions might save stuff you don't want to save, and I remember some old problems with it (maybe solved now, but I got into the habit of never saving sessions).

I remember having a very hard time with trying to get it to work properly with kde. Either the transparency, or the colours, or the icons always got screwed up.I tried it with 5.8 so at the time, so I don't think esetroot or feh were in the repos, and ended up forgetting about it.

Let us know if it works... I think this is a very old problem with conky (or with KDE) due to the desktop being drawn over the root window... or something.